AuthorTopic: After the Landing (Read 253537 times)

Scenario: Plane lands on reef edge, landing is rough enough to injure but not incapacitate occupants. After recovering some strength the crew disembarks and pilot injures ankle negotiating reef flat. Walking in the surf is very difficult so life line is tied off from plane to trees along the shore. Radio calls begin and continue for several days. Crew explores vacinity of shore around airplane, find boats and debris from Norwich City. Tides continue to rise until plane is torn off the landing gear and is submerged in the surf. Crew forced to shore. Search Planes fly over. Crew unable to draw attension for whatever reason, asleep? exploring in bush? unable to walk quickly enough? In time castaways move to "Seven Site" where one or both perish under the ren tree....

Your turn to put it all together and write your own scenario. Try to keep it on topic, it's all theory and we are not trying to argue points or tear ideas apart. If you have a scenario of what happened after the last known radio call lets see it! Gary; It's just for fun so lets see your idea of what happened!

Brad, You might not be far from what happened in your previous post...

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Since we are merely playing the "what if" game, how about this:After sustaining fairly serious injuries in a very rough landing, Fred and Amelia are effectively trapped inside the aircraft. Amelia cannot reach the rear of the aircraft to retrieve the correct charts and instrumentation to allow them to positively identify where they have come down. After a time, Amelia is able to get free and find the name of the ship on the reef, and discover that the aircraft is able to run the right engine allowing her to recharge the nearly flat batteries. This allows further use of the radio. A few days pass, the airplane is being washed back and forth and Amelia cannot get Fred out of the cockpit hatch due to his injuries as well as her own. His condition continues to deteriorate until he passes away and Amelia abandons the wreckage to the sea. During the days that the aircraft was still transmitting, Amelia is forced to try to find help on the island, finding none she begins to understand what awaits her...

I'm in agreement that there is a chance they reached Gardner IslandNot certain the landing was 'good'Snagged groove in reef at speed on landingLeft wing and landing gear totalled = nessie?Occupants injuredCan run right engine, temporarilyElectrics not submerged, yet = can transmit, temporarilyDamage sustained on landing enough to weaken airframe enabling wave/tide/current dismantling = shadow in surf line?Some sections washed over reef edge (Bouyancy)Airplanes remains washed further out and down 7 days (Bouyancy)Castaway 14 to 21 days max

Of all I have read of the fire features, artifacts and other evidence found at the Seven Site, I can't seem to find an official current estimate of how long the castaways may have survived. If its because of a reluctance to share it publically, I can understand. But it would be fun to hear something even if it is just a S.W.A.G.!

that would be hard to predict, due to the fact either lighter fuel or matches run out before they perished

the compact mirror they could have used for a while to start fires etc, but then they cud have used the mirror to attracted fly over planes by reflecting sun off mirror, maybe it broke before then an the smaller pieces were to small an hot to handle

1. I accept that there is a possibility that they might have reached Gardner Island - simply because of the enigmatic 157/337 radio message. Where and if they landed is not known.

2. I am not convinced they landed on the outer edge of the reef.

3. The post disappearance radio signals are problematic as to location.

4. There is not sufficient evidence yet to say that whoever occupied the 7 site was indeed one or both of the aviators. I remain unconvinced about the re-identification of the missing skeletal material as a caucasian female.

5. The next expedition to Nikumaroro needs to find unequivocal material evidence.

Well Malcolm, You appear to be somewhat skeptical of the landed on Gardner theory. As I stated in the original post, Lets hear YOUR scenario of what happened after the last known radio message. Thats the whole idea behind this thread, I don't want to debate it (yet) but lets have some fun with it. If you believe aliens flew behind her, lets hear it! Crashed and sank, Lets hear it! Simply stating that your not convinced isn't anything new, plenty of people who share ideas here aren't convinced either, and I'd be willing to bet some of 'em are pretty prominent figures in the Tighar organization. So Malcom lets hear it! What happened AFTER the last radio transmission?

I've been following TIGHAR's work for 8 or 9 years, and am pretty up on all the minutiae of the investigation (more so, I can tell, than a lot of the naysayers that have posted here). I believe in the methodology used by TIGHAR and when I had regular employment did contribute. But I haven't registered and posted here, until now...though I've been following the conversation with interest.

The reason I just registered with TIGHAR again was because in reading this thread, I was just totally gobsmacked by a thought that had never occurred to me before, and I am fairly sure no one else has ever posted, either. It's an answer to the relevant question: why did AE and FN leave the plane, and how did they get clear down to the other side of the island, especially if FN was injured? Why didn't they stick close to the plane and the NORWICH CITY and await rescue there?

I can tell you exactly why. I can't believe it hasn't come up before.

The reason AE and FN left the plane when and if the radio stopped working and/or it went over the reef is that, now that they had no way to contact the outside world and no real expectation of a search party given their understanding of the situation, assuming they heard the KGMB broadcasts (and there is evidence they did), they did exactly what you would do in the same situation: they went for help elsewhere.

Because AE and FN could not know for sure the island was uninhabited.

Think about it. Yes, they probably overflew the island, just like Lambrecht did. Lambrecht saw signs of recent habitation, but thought there was nothing hinky about it, because for all he knew, a couple of natives were hanging out there from time to time. AE's and FN's information would be no better; despite not seeing anything concrete from the air, it's a big island...for all they knew it was inhabited, or at least got some regular visitations from nearby natives. If help wasn't coming from elsewhere, they had to hope that there was someone else, somewhere, on the island. It was their best option. Way better than trying to drag a lifeboat around.

So yeah, it's day 3 or 4 or 5, nobody's coming to the rescue, nobody's acknowledged getting my distress signals, nobody's appeared on the horizon, and FN is dying on me, and I'm AE. What am I going to do? I am gonna find out if anybody else is on this fricking island. I'm going to feel pretty stupid if, LOST-style, there's someone else hiding out in a hut on the other side and I never went to find them.

I think this also gives a partial explanation as to why they missed the overflight. Any number of things could have been going on -- exhaustion-induced post-sleep stupor slowing their reflexes, some kind of a medical emergency, or both -- to keep them from breaking cover. But I would bet money they were already making their way to the other side of the island by that point, and very likely moving slowly and in the shade. With the party injured and food and water scarce, time would have been of the essence. Remember, it was a full week later that Lambrecht showed up. Way past time for them to start looking at other options than rescue.

Maybe in their minds there was only 10% chance there was someone else there. But compared to sitting there and dying waiting for a rescue that seemed likely not to arrive, it was their best shot.

The one last definite piece of evidence is the 157/337 radio message. Unfortunately there is no indication of where on the flight path Earhart and Noonan decided to adopt that course in search for Howland Island. So if they had overflown Howland Island then they were flying that line over a rather big stretch of ocean. If they had headed NW then chances of finding land are minimal, if they flew SE bearing in mind the sun position above the horizon and the difficulty of distinguishing cloud shadows from islands then finding land is still difficult even though there are better chances on the south-eastern leg. The same applies if they adopted the 157/337 line if they were short of Howland Island on their chosen course. So even accepting that they flew the 157/377 line does not provide us with a certainty that they will sight Gardner on that course.

So what happens then leaves us with four believable scenarios as distinct from the abducted by aliens, spying for FDR or similar flights of fancy. These are -

1. They overflew Howland Island and ran out of fuel and ditched in the ocean. After an unknown time they succumbed to sharks or just drowned. The remaining physical evidence of that would be aircraft wreckage somewhere in a vast area of ocean.

2. They overflew or couldn't find Howland Island and knowing they were lost and, as per the radio message, commenced flying on a line 157/337 which, because we do not know at what position on their original course they started that, could have found Gardner Island and landed on the reef. They survived there for a short time probably only a few days given the local conditions, possible injury and died. Their remains were dispersed and destroyed by crabs and the weather. The aircraft was washed off the reef and lies somewhere in the water around the island at great depth. This is the TIGHAR hypothesis and they have detailed why they propose it.

3. Having discovered that they had not found Howland Island Earhart and Noonan adopted the contingency plan and flew towards the Gilberts. Somewhere in that area they either ditched in the ocean or came down on or near an island where the wreckage might still be.

4. They instead opted to fly a reciprocal course which eventually led them to crash on New Britain which is the hypothesis based on the testimony of the Australian patrol that claimed to have found an unidentified aircraft wreck in 1945. This has merit also because we do not know precisely where Earhart and Noonan were when they decided they couldn't find Howland. The strength of radio signals is not a precise method of estimating a position by the receiver and Earhart did not, it appears, understand how to operate the DF device they had, or, it appears, knew how long she had to transmit for to enable the receiving station to get a fix.

In summary then I see four possible fates for Earhart and Noonan of which only one can be right. Which is to say the remains of the Electra can only be in one place. As I said the evidence of the post-disappearance messages is at best are problematic because they do not give a location - if genuine they could have come from a reef or uninhabited island in the Gilberts to the north-west as much as from Gardner Island.

I've said it before that the material evidence found on Gardner (shoe parts, compact mirror and that one fragment of aircraft skin) is interesting but are not conclusive. The account by the settlers of the PISS about plane wreckage is interesting but unverified and "Nessie" at present could be anything. The skeletal remains were initially identified physically as a male and probably a person of Pacific Islander heritage - the recent re-identification is not based on the physical evidence and is at best only a hypothesis. After all a male Polynesian castaway on Nikumaroro is as likely, given the documented cases of Pacific Islanders being carried long distances by storms and surviving and one could have suffered that fate and come ashore on Nikumaroro sometime in the early 30s or even late 20s.

So my position in this matter is undecided and will only be decided if material evidence that is irrefutable (skeletal and subsequent DNA or dental verification, the actual wreck of the Electra or parts thereof or something else of similar certainty) is found to indicate their landing and subsequent death on Nikumaroro or elsewhere. Frankly at this stage, given the evidence available, the actual fate of Earhart and Noonan is not yet demonstrated. Everything else, however emotionally compelling, is hypothesis.

All of which aside I wish TIGHAR every success in finding the crucial evidence, as I do to anyone else investigating the fate of the lost aviators.

So yeah, it's day 3 or 4 or 5, nobody's coming to the rescue, nobody's acknowledged getting my distress signals, nobody's appeared on the horizon, and FN is dying on me, and I'm AE. What am I going to do? I am gonna find out if anybody else is on this fricking island. I'm going to feel pretty stupid if, LOST-style, there's someone else hiding out in a hut on the other side and I never went to find them.

Why wait for day 3, 4 or 5 why not the day they landed, day 1, or first thing the next day, day 2, at the latest? Why wait til you are hungry and thirsty, go find help now. In reality, isn't that what you would have done?

How long do you think it would take to walk all the way around the island? Read Bevington's journal. He managed to walk the entire circuit, without any water or food, starting at 9 am and finishing at 3:30 pm, a total of only six and half hours and they were doing investigations along the way. The slowest members of his group took three hours longer. So there is no reason to believe that they could have only made it as far as the "7" site before giving up.

So yeah, it's day 3 or 4 or 5, nobody's coming to the rescue, nobody's acknowledged getting my distress signals, nobody's appeared on the horizon, and FN is dying on me, and I'm AE. What am I going to do? I am gonna find out if anybody else is on this fricking island. I'm going to feel pretty stupid if, LOST-style, there's someone else hiding out in a hut on the other side and I never went to find them.

Why wait for day 3, 4 or 5 why not the day they landed, day 1, or first thing the next day, day 2, at the latest? Why wait til you are hungry and thirsty, go find help now. In reality, isn't that what you would have done?

How long do you think it would take to walk all the way around the island? Read Bevington's journal. He managed to walk the entire circuit, without any water or food, starting at 9 am and finishing at 3:30 pm, a total of only six and half hours and they were doing investigations along the way. The slowest members of his group took three hours longer. So there is no reason to believe that they could have only made it as far as the "7" site before giving up.

gl

Hell no, that's not what I would have done. While there's a visible landmark (plane), an outside tether to the world (radio), and means to operate (battery/remaining gas), I am staying right by that plane. I have a limited window to run the radio before the juice runs out and (as may have become increasingly evident) the plane itself disappears. Add to that the supposition that FN was injured, which may have prevented them from, say, splitting up...no way. Leaving the area of the plane would be completely idiotic.

Once the radio and plane are gone, though, and a day or two have gone by without rescue, that changes the game. As for how long Bevington took to go around the island, how is that relevant to AE and FN's situation? -- four days out, probably massively dehydrated, exhausted from lack of sleep (remember they had not slept for 24 hours when they landed), and with the likelihood that one or both of them are injured (if Betty's notebook is to be believed, we have a delirious FN and a possible ankle injury with AE). None of these factors is going to make for a speedy trip. As for why the Seven Site specifically -- the hypothesis isn't that they could go no further, as you suggest, but that in 1937 it was about the best place on the island both to be relatively comfortable climate-wise, to await rescue, and to hunt food. And after making a circuit of the island, that's the NEXT logical thing I would do...OK, no one's here, we're tired, nothing back at the plane site anyway, let's hang here. Ergo, Seven Site.

It all hangs together perfectly logically to me. I'm well aware of your skepticism from reading the board, Gary, but to score points in an intellectually honest way it's not enough just to poke holes in a theory -- anyone can do that to what is, simply, a hypothesis being tested, and in a singularly thorough and above-board manner. You need to present an alternate hypothesis that makes more sense and fits the available facts as well, or better.

In summary then I see four possible fates for Earhart and Noonan of which only one can be right. Which is to say the remains of the Electra can only be in one place. As I said the evidence of the post-disappearance messages is at best are problematic because they do not give a location - if genuine they could have come from a reef or uninhabited island in the Gilberts to the north-west as much as from Gardner Island.

I've said it before that the material evidence found on Gardner (shoe parts, compact mirror and that one fragment of aircraft skin) is interesting but are not conclusive. The account by the settlers of the PISS about plane wreckage is interesting but unverified and "Nessie" at present could be anything. The skeletal remains were initially identified physically as a male and probably a person of Pacific Islander heritage - the recent re-identification is not based on the physical evidence and is at best only a hypothesis. After all a male Polynesian castaway on Nikumaroro is as likely, given the documented cases of Pacific Islanders being carried long distances by storms and surviving and one could have suffered that fate and come ashore on Nikumaroro sometime in the early 30s or even late 20s.

So my position in this matter is undecided and will only be decided if material evidence that is irrefutable (skeletal and subsequent DNA or dental verification, the actual wreck of the Electra or parts thereof or something else of similar certainty) is found to indicate their landing and subsequent death on Nikumaroro or elsewhere. Frankly at this stage, given the evidence available, the actual fate of Earhart and Noonan is not yet demonstrated. Everything else, however emotionally compelling, is hypothesis.

All of which aside I wish TIGHAR every success in finding the crucial evidence, as I do to anyone else investigating the fate of the lost aviators.

Hi Malcolm...glad to have a chance to engage with you too. I respect your opinion, but you're oddly overlooking -- intentionally or otherwise -- two key bits of evidence that make TIGHAR's case much stronger than you imply above.

With respect to the radio messages being absent a location, you have 5 (out of 7 I believe) direction fixes on post-loss messages that intersect at or near Gardner Island. In at least one of those cases the operator was firm both as to the quality of the fix and that he heard Earhart's voice. So it's wrong to say there is no direct radio evidence that the post-loss messages eminated from Gardner. In fact, the evidence is very strong that it did. Adding to that is the fact that other than AE and Itasca, there should have been no one on that frequency in the South Pacific. Yes, you can suggest that there was a hoaxer somewhere in the South Pacific and that all the DF bearings were wrong, and that is certainly possible...but that is a far LESS probable explanation than that AE was transmitting from Gardner.

With respect to the skeletal remains, I do respect your questioning the analysis of the bones. It's at best a split decision. However, your hypothesis that a native washed ashore does not jibe with the gender- and period-specific discovery of cosmetics, a woman's shoe (Gallagher himself saw one, which is what put Earhart in his mind), and other items that a native male would simply not be carrying. Again, Occam's Razor applies: Yes, one can fabricate another explanation perhaps. But is it the simplest and most logical one? I think not.

I think to suggest that the amount of evidence TIGHAR has uncovered is "scant" is not a fair reading of the facts. It is perhaps not conclusive. But, again, evidence is not proof. It is supporting material to a theory, and a careful as opposed to surface review of what TIGHAR has uncovered reveals that they have amassed quite an impressive amount of admittedly circumstantial information that supports their case.

Hi Malcolm...glad to have a chance to engage with you too. I respect your opinion, etc.

Hello Adam

I think even TIGHAR admit that the radio messages only provide very scant evidence of Earhart and Noonan's location. The extrapolation to Gardner Island using them really only hinges on the 157/337 line transmission.

The skeletal re-examination without access to either the bones or scaled photographs does not provide anything other than an informed guess. Currently, despite TIGHAR's rather hopeful thinking following that re-examination that they are of a white female (ergo Amelia Earhart), I have no reason to doubt Dr Hoodless's original conclusion. That is not to say I am closed to further proven evidence or examination of the island, just that as someone with a background in field archaeology and bone recovery I see nothing in the new claim that conclusively overturns his findings.

Also and very importantly there is no exact information regarding the exact locus of their recovery, by that I mean physical data like depth, stratigraphy etc., and how any other items were associated with them. Working as an archaeologist I have recovered skeletal remains which were either very fragmentary or more complete and it is exceedingly difficult work - especially working out if any items found with them are in fact part of the grave assemblage or simply chance juxtapositions due to natural or unrelated activity.

I won't reiterate the four hypotheses as I see them but I can say that currently the physical evidence produced so far, from my experience in archaeology, is too scant to make Nikumaroro any more certain than any of the four competing hypotheses. The key to proof is the recovery of the Electra wreck - and once more nothing conclusive has been found so far.

Therefore as to offering hypotheses about the hypothetical movements of our hypothetical crash survivors who are suffering from hypothetical injuries I prefer to abstain. All it will turn into is an exercise in fantasy like the identification of aircraft fragments on the ROV footage when one doesn't even have a scale with which to work out sizes of what are, to all intents and purposes, amorphous chunks of coral debris.

Hell no, that's not what I would have done. While there's a visible landmark (plane), an outside tether to the world (radio), and means to operate (battery/remaining gas), I am staying right by that plane. I have a limited window to run the radio before the juice runs out and (as may have become increasingly evident) the plane itself disappears. Add to that the supposition that FN was injured, which may have prevented them from, say, splitting up...no way. Leaving the area of the plane would be completely idiotic.

"Fred, according to Betty you're injured, so you better wait here. Keep a sharp lookout for any planes or boats. Try to stay in the shade a bit but don't go very far into the bush, you need to be able to get out and wave if something comes by."

"What are you going to do, Amelia?"

"I'm going to see if I can find some help."

"Why don't you wait til tomorrow?"

"Because I'm worried that I may be weaker and unable to do it tomorrow due to hunger and thirst, today is my best shot."

"How long will you be gone, I don't like being left alone."

"Well, the island didn't look too big when we were landing so I will see if I can walk all the way around it, that way I can't miss finding help if there is someone on the island. I"ll be back before sundown, after all, I can't get lost, it is an island after all."

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